Sunday, November 28, 2010

* à¹à¸à¸à¹à¸à¹à¸à¹à¸à¸à¹à¸à¸ à¹à¸à¹à¸à¹à¸à¹à¸à¹à¸à¹à¸à¸à¹à¸à¹à¸à¹à¸à¸à¹à¸ * Motown Around The World à¹ The Classic Singles (2010)

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Motown Records made international inroads in the mid-1960s, with hits in the United Kingdom and a fan base spreading across Europe. The company wanted to do more, and the vision was this: By the end of the decade Motown superstars, from Stevie Wonder to the Temptations, the Supremes to the Four Tops, Edwin Starr to Martha & the Vandellas, would record and release Italian, German and Spanish language versions of several of their classic hits, as well as five new songs created especially for the local market. Those singles - and a promotion-only album of the Italian recordings - became instant collector's items.

Now, for the first time, all of Motown's classic-era foreign language singles are collected on Motown Around The World: The Classic Singles, a 38-track, 2-CD set from Hip-oSelect.com -including four French recordings by the Velvelettes, discovered in the vault for their 2004 U.K. Anthology. As another bonus, Motown Around The World includes two Spanish cuts from the late `70s-early `80s: Spanish versions of "Being With You" by Smokey Robinson and "Let Get Serious" by Jermaine Jackson, the latter in a super-rare long version. It's refreshing - and an exceptional treat - to hear the hits "My Girl," "You Can't Hurry Love," "What Becomes Of The Brokenhearted," "For Once In My Life," "I Can't Help Myself" and so many more sung by their originators in Italian, or German, or Spanish. (Stevie Wonder has 11 songs in Italian and Spanish by himself.) All of the artists, in a setting much like a special Artist Development class, learned the lyrics phonetically from special instructors flown in from their respective countries. Hip-oSelect.com's Motown Around The World: The Classic Singles finally restores to print this great and hardly-heard moment in Motown history. (While this collection borrows its title from a short-lived single CD compilation of selected Motown foreign language tracks, that late 1980s release did not include the original single versions of the songs; this 2-CD edition features the original single mixes for all but a small handful of the German tracks.) Motown Around The World: The Classic Singles is presented in an attractive package with a 24-page booklet designed to look like an international passport. Inside are rare photos of Motown stars in settings around the world, reproductions of the original single sleeves, a 9.5" x 14" sticker sheet, detailed annotations and an essay by Dr. Andrew Flory. As the Supremes sing in the opening cut: "L'Amore Verrà."